- The word probably came about when people would order cheese sauce with salsa in it they would be in a Mexican restaurant. Cheese was probably often listed as queso and so people started using the word queso to mean this type of cheese sauce. Thus it is a borrowed word. In Spanish, however, queso just means cheese so the meaning was narrowed after being borrowed.
Queso
other word formation type Narrowing and Borrowed Word, Noun
A type of cheese sauce mixed with salsa, often used for dipping chips or tortillas in.
Etymology : Clearly queso comes from Spanish which originally took it from the Latin caseus meaning cheese.
Source : "I'll have an order of tortillas with a side of queso." - Skyler Johnson at Taco Cabana. 2007
Last modified: 2 December 2008